March 5, 2020
The meadows skim over at night.
White pine cones half fallen.
The old naturalists were so sensitive and sympathetic
to nature that they could be surprised by the ordinary events of life. It was
an incessant miracle to them, and therefore gorgons and flying dragons were not
incredible to them. The greatest and saddest defect is not credulity, but our
habitual forgetfulness that our science is ignorance.
Chickweed and shepherd's-purse
in bloom in C.'s garden, and probably all winter, or each month.
The
song sparrows begin to sing hereabouts.
I see some tame ducks in the river, six
of them. It is amusing to see how exactly perpendicular they will stand, with
their heads on the bottom and their tails up, plucking some food there, three
or four at once. Perhaps the grass, etc., is a little further advanced there
for them.
George Buttrick thinks that forty musquash have been killed this
spring between Hunt's and Flint's Bridge. The best time to hunt them is early
morning and evening. His father goes out at daybreak, and can kill more in one
hour after that than from that time to near sunset. He says that he has found
eleven young in one musquash, and that Joel Barrett observed that one pair near
his house bred five times in one year. Thought it would hardly pay to shoot
them for their fur alone, but would if you owned river-meadow banks, they
undermine them so.
So far as the natural history is concerned, you often have
your choice between uninteresting truth and interesting falsehood.
As the
ancients talked about ”hot and cold, moist and dry,” so the moderns talk about ”electric”
qualities.
As we sat under Lupine Promontory the other day, watching the
ripples that swept over the flooded meadow and thinking what an eligible site
that would be for a cottage, C. declared that we did not live in the country as
long as we lived on that village street and only took walks into the fields,
any more than if we lived in Boston or New York. We enjoyed none of the
immortal quiet of the country as we might here, for instance, but
per chance the first sound that we hear in the morning, instead of the
tinkling of a bird, is your neighbor hawking and spitting.
Our spiræas have been
considerably unfolded for several days.
Ways fairly settled generally.
H.
D. Thoreau, Journal, March 5, 1860
White pine cones half fallen. See February 25, 1860 (“ The white pine cones have been blowing off more or less in every high wind ever since the winter began, and yet perhaps they have not more than half fallen yet.”); March 7, 1855 ("Picked up a very handsome white pine cone some six and a half inches long by two and three eighths near base and two near apex, perfectly blossomed. It is a very rich and wholesome brown color, of various shades as you turn it in your hand, —a light ashy or gray brown, somewhat like unpainted wood. as you look down on it, or as if the lighter brown were covered with a gray lichen, seeing only those parts of the scales always exposed, —with a few darker streaks or marks and a drop of pitch at the point of each scale. Within, the scales are a dark brown above (i.e. as it hangs) and a light brown beneath, Very distinctly being marked beneath by the same darker brown, down the centre and near the apex somewhat anchor wise. “) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines
Gorgons and flying dragons. See February 18, 1860 ("The old writers have left a more lively and lifelike account of the gorgon than modern writers give us of real animals.")
George Buttrick thinks that forty musquash have been killed this spring between Hunt's and Flint's Bridge. See February 24, 1860 ("The river risen and quite over the meadows yesterday and to-day, and musquash begun to be killed."); March 2, 1860 ("Men shooting musquash these days.")
